1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a contents distribution system for facilitating extensive contents utilization, and enabling production and sales of contents in a form of a secondary product constructed as a work incorporating charged contents as raw material contents.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nowadays, due to the advance and spread of the computer networks such as WWW (World Wide Web) and the improved performances of network terminals, it becomes possible to easily exchange an enormous amount of digital contents (software) such as text, music, video, computer programs, etc., without any geographical limitation. Namely, by providing a server connected to a network such as WWW and storing contents in this server such that they can be distributed from there, it becomes possible to download and utilize these contents anywhere on the network. This can be regarded as a distribution revolution realized by the network distribution in the field of the contents distribution.
In the past, the charged contents such as text, music, video, computer programs, etc. have been shipped as products in forms of articles having some shape and size using papers, magnetic medium, optical medium, etc., and merchandized through distribution retailers of retail stores, telephone order centers, etc. Now, it becomes possible to merchandize these contents by the network distribution so that the users can purchase them any time anywhere, without worrying about the store hours or distances.
When such an environment becomes available, the next important stage is to develop a technique for mechanically realizing a fee collecting mechanism. Such a mechanical charging technique for the charged contents (software) distributed through the network is expected to become very important in future, because it can free the distribution cost and the labor cost related to the charging processing and it can theoretically eliminate the illegal use of the charged contents.
A typical known contents charging system has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 11-283327 (1999).
Briefly, this system operates as follows. At a time of distribution, the contents are distributed in a data format containing the encrypted contents and a contract term regarding the reproduction (this data format will be referred to as “distribution format”), and at a time of reproduction, the contents are reproduced by decrypting them by using a key that can be acquired in exchange to the execution of the contract (this state will be referred to as “reproduction format”). This system can handle the contents utilization model in which the contents utilization right can be purchased by paying the appropriate fee. Here, this type of contents utilization style will be referred to as “buy up scheme”.
In this known contents charging system, because the “buy up scheme” is used, the transaction will be completed when the sales agreement is made and the contents are delivered. In the case of selling the contents produced from nothing, there is only one contents creator so that the processing by which the contents user pays the fee to the contents creator can be handled by this known contents charging system.
Although rather rare in the case of music, painting, etc., it is a fairly common practice in the case of Web pages, 3D computer graphics, etc., to purchase the charged contents of the others and produce another new work by incorporating the purchased contents as raw material contents. In such cases, the style of transaction has been such that the secondary product creator buys up the right to use each raw material contents to be used in the new work from the raw material provider (raw material creator) and sells the new work that utilizes the purchased raw material contents, that is, the merchandizing is completed at each contents transaction stage, so that the entire contract processing can be handled without any problem by the above described known contents charging system even in this style of transaction.
Note that, in the above, a creator of the raw material contents is referred to as the raw material provider and a creator of a work that utilizes the provided raw material contents is referred to as a secondary product creator. Also, in the following, the contents created by a single creator will be referred to as genuine contents and the contents produced by incorporating raw material contents will be referred to as composite contents, for the sake of explanation.
In the case of the “buy up scheme”, the sales price of the raw material is estimated according to the expected cumulative profit of the secondary product creator resulting from the use of that raw material, and the customers are limited to the secondary product creators, that is, the market is small, so that there is a natural tendency to set a rather high price. For this reason, the system using the “buy up scheme” will require the users to endure the unreasonably high economical burden so that it is impractical to expect a significant increase of the users in terms of the business and therefore it is likely to become a system with rather poor future prospect.
Note that the re-use oriented contents utilization style and distribution market in the open world in which users can create secondary products by editing and processing primary contents on general purpose PCs is known as “contents recycling market”. However, even this system cannot provide a mechanism in which the burden on the users at a time of utilizing the contents is reduced to a reasonable level.
In the case of creating the contents, the creator can adopt either an original creation style in which the entire contents are developed independently or a secondary processing style in which the raw materials are purchased from the raw material providers and the desired contents are constructed by using the purchased raw materials.
In the case of adopting the original creation style, the contents development cost and time can be enormous, whereas in the case of adopting the secondary processing style, the time required for the contents development can be reduced so that the contents in good quality can be developed in short time at a relatively low cost. However, in the latter case, the raw materials to be utilized must be purchased so that there is a need to consider a balance among the initial investment for purchasing the raw materials, the cost required in creating the secondary product, and the market demands for the created secondary product, which could be a factor for preventing the utilization of the raw materials.
Even in the “contents recycling market” which is the re-use oriented contents utilization style and distribution market in which the secondary products can be created by the secondary processing of the purchased raw materials and the resulting secondary products can then be provided as charged raw materials, the secondary product creator who utilizes the raw materials must purchase the raw materials to be utilized so that there is a considerable financial burden on the secondary product creator. Namely, the idea of the “contents recycling market” is aimed at providing a mechanism for recycling the contents as a work, and the creators of the raw materials to be provided to the secondary product creators naturally tend to ask for the high sales prices for the raw materials in view of the expected sales volumes, especially when the raw materials to be provided are highly sophisticated ones.
This fact makes it difficult to break the vicious circle of requiring the heavy raw material purchasing burden on the secondary product creators, raising the sales prices of the secondary product contents, and lowering the sales volumes as a result.